Hurricane Maria rushes towards Newfoundland

Hurricane Maria is bearing down on Newfoundland, Canada, as a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds. The wind shear over Maria turned out to be much lower than was predicted yesterday, allowing the storm to organize into the season's third hurricane. Latest satellite imagery shows that Maria is steadily degrading, with a hole in the storm's southwest eyewall, and the cloud pattern distorted by 30 - 50 knots of wind shear. The eyewall has collapsed, as seen on recent microwave satellite imagery. Maria's very fast forward speed of 45 mph means that only locations on the right (strong) side will experience hurricane force winds. With the center of Maria expected to pass over the extreme southeast tip of Newfoundland, only a small region of the island near Cape Race will see the powerful right-front quadrant of the storm. Winds at Sagona Island on the south shore of Newfoundland were sustained at 50 mph at 7:30 am local time, but have dropped to 37 mph at 9:10 am. Winds in the capital of St. John's have been rising steadily this morning, and were sustained at 37 mph, gusting to 46 mph, at 10:30 am local time. Winds will probably reach sustained speeds of 55 - 65 mph between 1 pm and 5 pm today in St. Johns, causing considerable tree damage and power failures. Radar out of Newfoundland shows the hurricane has been dumping heavy rains over the southeastern portion of the island this morning; rainfall has been under a half inch thus far at most locations, though. Along with wind damage, heavy rains leading to flash flooding are the main threat from Maria; last year, heavy rains of up to 8 inches from Hurricane Igor caused major damage in Newfoundland. Fortunately, Maria's rains are not expected to be as heavy as Igor's. According to the Canadian Hurricane Center, rivers in eastern Newfoundland are currently at average to below average levels, which will limit the amount of flooding. Maria's storm surge will arrive when the normal astronomical tide will be going out, limiting the damage the expected 3-foot storm surge will do.

Yesterday, Maria brought a brief 8-minute period of sustained winds of tropical storm force, 39 mph, to the Bermuda airport. Bermuda picked up 0.20" of rain from Maria.

Newfoundland's second consecutive year with a hurricaneIf Maria strikes Newfoundland as a hurricane, this will be the province's second consecutive year with a hurricane strike, something that has never occurred since hurricane record keeping began in 1851. Last year, Hurricane Igor killed one person on Newfoundland, and damage exceeded $100 million, making Igor the most damaging tropical cyclone in Newfoundland history. A summary of the impact of Igor prepared by Environment Canada put it this way:

"Hurricane Igor and its severe impacts certainly represent a rare event in Newfoundland history which has been described as the worst in memory. In statistical terms, this was effectively a 50 - 100 year event depending on how one chooses to define it. There are no hurricanes/post tropical events of this magnitude striking Newfoundland in the modern era. Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia was the last Atlantic Canadian hurricane to cause extreme damage. Prior to the naming of hurricanes, the 1935 Newfoundland Hurricane 75 years ago was of similar intensity."

Elsewhere in the tropicsAll of the models have been sporadically predicting development of a tropical wave 5 - 7 days from now between Africa and the Lesser Antilles. The location and timing of the hypothetical storm have been inconsistent, and there is at present no signs of anything brewing. The NOGAPS model continues to predict a strong tropical disturbance or tropical depression could form in the Caribbean 6 - 7 days from now, near Jamaica. None of the other models is supporting this idea, so the NOGAPS model is probably wrong on this scenario. I'll have an update Saturday afternoon.

Quoting PlazaRed:Possibly the biggest problem humanity has ever had to deal with, Awesome to say the least.If its true then the future direction of all nations and commercial existence will be in jeopardy.Might just be caused by an increase in the burning of carbon based compounds in an oxygen rich atmosphere, leading to an increase in CO2.The rest might just be history,one day.

Are you scared?"Yes!!"Well, you shouldnt be."Why?"Because you're on Scare Tactics!

479 tropicofcancer "Obviously these "cool teachers" didn't teach you how to spell!"

We don't do Whack-a-Typo here......unless the typo itself ends up converting a sentence into a nonsequitur that tickles the funnybone*.We all typo, we all misspell. Waste of weather/geophysics blog space to point them out. Plus you've just risked getting severely stomped on by "those in the know" around here.

* Yes, I do know about 'non sequitur' and 'funny bone'. I prefer my own variants, as well as my own punctuation rules.

Well the first week of jr year was GREAT! i went to jr gg and put meteorology/atmospheric studies as my masters and i hope i can get somewhere with him in colleges and whatnot... it was cold here in Staten Island a chilly 47 from my personal weather station brrrrrr.....

Quoting MANYMOREGOOFSTOCOME: 6 to 8 more? hahahaha and out of the 14 storms this 2 might have real lol the rest garbage

I believe they all met the criterion needed by the NHC to name them.Albeit a lot of the storms this year have had atmospheric issues of one kind or another,making them appear as"garbage", they have all met NHC requirements.They don't sit around over at NHC and say this wave looks like crap,let's name it,to piss off the folks on Doc Masters Blog.

Quoting Objectivist:Perhaps 2 deg C globally? The other solar Grand Minima (Maunder and Dalton) produced temperatures sufficient for the Thames River to freeze in the wintertime. :-)

The solar cycle is responsible for almost an order of magnitude less than that.... something like 0.2-0.3C. The difference in solar forcing between today and the Maunder Minimum would be completely overtaken within just a few years to a decade of greenhouse gas emissions at today's present rate. Considering that this lull in solar activity has been ongoing for some time, the effect would probably be even less than that, and it wouldn't be immediate due to the climate system's thermal inertia.

THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER HAS ISSUED THE FINAL ADVISORY ONHURRICANE MARIA...LOCATED ABOUT 145 MILES NORTH-NORTHEAST OF CAPERACE NEWFOUNDLAND. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS SYSTEM CAN BEFOUND IN HIGH SEAS FORECASTS ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL WEATHERSERVICE...UNDER AWIPS HEADER NFDHSFAT1 AND WMO HEADER FZNT01 KWBC.

A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED ABOUT 400 MILES SOUTHEAST OF THESOUTHERN CAPE VERDE ISLANDS IS PRODUCING SCATTERED SHOWERS ANDTHUNDERSTORMS. SOME GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS DISTURBANCE ISPOSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH. THIS SYSTEM HAS A LOW CHANCE...20 PERCENT...OFBECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

Quoting FrankZapper:Does anyone know why thunderstorms are so rare in a hurricane? In Lee recently I did not experience ANY lightening or thunder in NOLA.

I believe the explanation is that hurricanes/tropical systems tend to be dominated by warm rain processes, or collision-coalescence. Static charges that cause lightning are generally related to ice formation in higher clouds, and most thunderstorms and stratiform rain events have their rainfall source with high cloud tops and melting ice. Warm rain processes generally produce infrequent lightning, which makes that type of storm particularly dangerous in flash flooding situations as radar may show a weak thundershower and people may not be alerted by frequent thunder/lightning.